History

In 1988, Volker Bohlmeier, owner and founder of EINSTEIN, together with Rolf Weiler decide to partner up and with their combined respective talents as listener, entrepreneur, technical designer and electronics engineer, to launch their first product, an amplifier. Thus, EINSTEIN’s vision for stereo design was born. Following three years of research and development, EINSTEIN in 1990 presents The Amp to the audio world. Immediately, audio connoisseurs and experts the world over recognize the most innovative solid state based technology of this amplifier and crown it with several achievements, not least of which praising The Amp’s purist design esthetics. Incredibly, almost overnight, The Amp becomes an instant classic and is recognized as such amongst all leading audio publications.

The dream of designing the world’s best preamplifier was always a long-term goal for Volker Bohlmeier and Rolf Weiler. Many great ideas came to life, alas, many of those ideas where only realizable via the use of tube based circuits, which resulted in EINSTEIN launching an entirely new, tube based line. Utilizing a tube based circuit resulted in Rolf Weiler creating some very clever and very good sounding, innovative circuits, which in turn bolstered the performance of The Tube to reference level. The Tube received the first formal review and test in 1999 by Roland Kraft in Image Hifi (German high-end audio publication). In 2007 (!), Soundstage, Americas leading online publication, awarded The Tube as the “most innovative product in 2007”.

Still, we continuously work to improve the performance of our products; The Tube, model year 2010, for example, has little more than the basic circuit layout in common with The Tube model year 1999.

1999 also saw the launch of our very first CD player, EINSTEIN’S The Last Record Player. Then, in 2002, we launched our output transformerless mono block power amplifiers, The Final Cut. With it, Volker Bohlmeier and Rolf Weiler managed to check off yet another leading dream of designing an amplifier based on this classic, yet incredibly complex circuit design. In combination with The Tube, EINSTEIN realized a whole new, never before heard of level of musical enjoyment.

What followed in 2003 was EINSTEIN’s first integrated amplifier, The Absolute Tune, which was of course heavily based on the development work shared between The Tube and The Final Cut mono block power amplifiers. Clearly, EINSTEIN achieved even this goal, as The Final Cut proved a formidable player within the confinements of being a reasonably priced hybrid integrated amplifier, yet achieving that so very legendary EINSTEIN sound.

A few years later, in 2005, EINSTEIN launched an all-new stereo hybrid amplifier for those customers who simply were unable to afford the price of The Final Cut OTL amplifiers.

Also, that same year, EINSTEIN entered into vinyl – phono – heaven with the launch of The Turntable’s Choice, an incredibly popular and most successful phono preamplifier, voted best sounding amongst many reviewers and publications. Further driving the development of our CD player, we launched the most recently updated version of our disc player, The Source. Much like The Tube, The Final Cut and The Turntable’s Choice, The Source quickly became a reference for many reviewers and publications alike.

The Final Cut was upgraded in 2010 to The Final Cut Ultimate; via an update to the circuit board and small, yet notable improvements to other components, similar to The Absolute Tune and The Light In The Dark, we added the badge “Limited” to the name. To keep our current customers satisfied and up to date, we offer this upgrade to all existing owners for a nominal “upgrade” fee directly through EINSTEIN.

Also in 2011, we updated our legendary pre amplifier, The Tube and in the process decided to change its name to The Preamp, signifying a marked step up in sound quality. Indeed, an otherwise perfect product was made even more perfect!

2012 saw the launch, nay, re-launch of our OTL amplifiers, now under their new name, The Silver Bullet. Like the updates leading to The Preamp, it’s stereo partner was updated to The Poweramp, similar in resepcts to The Silver Bullet.

Finally, 2012 also saw the launch of our all new cable line. Together with industry expert Konrad Wächter, EINSTEIN launched The Flash interconnect and The Thunder loudspeaker cables.

Of course there are many, many more unrealized EINSTEIN products in our pipeline, which we are continuously working on and towards.

Music lovers and reviewers the world over alike all love and appreciate EINSTEIN components and consider them to be state of the art and part of a small, elite group of ultimate quality audio components. At audio shows around the world, EINSTEIN always is counted amongst the top rooms in all the leading audio press. Time and again our reviews come out on top and most of our components end up on each magazine’s component reference list – so much so, that we could happily print an entire catalog based on that alone! The world over, be it the US, England, Italy, Germany, Japan, France, Vietnam, Hong Kong – China, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Iran, Dubai – UAE, Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Indonesia, Australia, does EINSTEIN get the highest recognition – without reservation!

For many a reviewer, the EINSTEIN sound is regarded as truly unique and above the typical audiophile mainstream. Often, reviewers seem shocked and perplexed at the sound of an EINSTEIN component. “Miles ahead” two renowned reviewers exclaimed, after a recent visit to the EINSTEIN room at CES in Las Vegas. Just before leaving, one of the reviewers even went so far as to proclaim “You’ve got a big problem: people won’t realize how far you’ve already gone!” Obviously, we are always extremely pleased with such reactions – from reviewers and customers alike.

Since we at EINSTEIN never rest until the best possible product has been created, most EINSTEIN components – if not all – have the potential to become true “classics” and remain in the market for a typically unusual length of time.

Even as we continue our work on yet to be released hardware, we only become satisfied and feel accomplished when the entire EINSTEIN team gets proverbial “Goosebumps”. All of us love music and look forward to continuing to create the extraordinary, best of class Hi-Fi gear.